“Does my thought create the condition or does my condition create the thought?” I asked that question one October day in 2007 to Bob Proctor and Mary Morrissey, empowering leaders on the forefront of the human potential movement for over 30 years. Bob and Mary informed me, “Of course the thought comes first; whatever we focus on shows up in our lives. What have you been thinking?”

So what was I thinking? I had what looked like a picture perfect life; lovely home in suburbia, healthy children, a loving family, great friends, a very successful husband, and no financial stress. There was still something missing. I thought, “There has to be more to life than this.” What am I doing with my life? I had no fire in my heart. Each day seemed like the next. Then after 9/11, I lived in fear. Time stood still and I felt powerless, unable to control my own life. What’s worse, I realized I had felt like that for a long time. I was letting all the circumstances of my life direct me; what my children needed, what events I had to be at, what I was supposed to do. I was so tired of the constant running. I didn’t have time to think about the life I wanted to create and had no idea where to start.

Distressed by persistent fainting episodes that began occurring more frequently, and overwhelmed by the busyness of my life, I began thinking about their answer daily. I knew the heart medication that the doctors wanted me to take for the rest of my life wasn’t the answer. But what was the answer? As I looked back at each of the episodes I realized they all occurred at times I felt helpless and hopeless. After giving birth to my third child in July 2001, I believe I was in the midst of post-partum depression. I had three small children and didn’t reach out for help; having been successful at multitasking in the corporate world for years I thought I should be able to handle it on my own. My husband was a great support when he was around but he left the house each morning at 6am and returned at 8pm every night.

With a limited belief in Bob and Mary’s theory that my thoughts created my condition, I started changing the things I thought about which changed the things I did. I had come to learn that our lives are built day-by-day, experience-by-experience. Throughout our lives, we may have made decisions out of fear and not even known it. Those silent decisions hold us back every day and we don’t even know that those decisions are running our lives.

I have been on a journey of creating my life by the thoughts I choose and I can say out loud, “I LOVE MY LIFE.” What is the life you would love to live? Look around you – the car you drive, the table you sit at, the page you are looking at now … they all started with a thought. Someone had an idea and brought it to physical form by thinking about what they wanted and then taking action. Look at your life. What have you created in your everyday life? Are you excited by your job/career? Does your physical health support you in doing all the things you want to do? Do you have financial freedom? Are your relationships the ones you always wanted to have?

Our time here is not a dress rehearsal. We have all come to this earth to give our unique gifts and talents and to deliver them in our own special way. The world needs you to proceed in its evolution.

What is the life you would love to live? We are creative beings and thinking is part of creation. The universal Law of Thinking states as we think, so our life becomes. I was recently thinking about the dark period of my life. The truth is that the real problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t have a vision for my life. I didn’t know what was possible. It was too much of an effort to think about that while I was doing so many other things. How about you? Have you spent more time buying furniture for your home or planning a vacation than planning your life? Are you focusing on the thought that your relationships are boring and not what they used to be or are you creating great relationships every day? Are you thinking how grateful you are that you have use of your body in some way or are you making excuses not to move it? Do you think about why you don’t love your job or do you think about ways to do what you love full time and make money at it? We can have the reasons or we can have the results.

Right now, list 5 things you would do if age, gender, time, money, education and experience were not factors. Now, imaginally move into that place in your mind. How would you be living your life if you could do all those things? Is that what your everyday life looks like now?

So begin to pay attention to what you are thinking now and what you predominately think about all day long. If a person is not thinking they are not growing. Mental activity, or being busy, does not constitute thinking. The kind of thinking that I am talking about requires a period of calm and quiet reflection.

Where is a good place to start thinking? The place to start is to ask, “What do I really want?” Not what do I think I can have or what do I think I can do, but what do I really want? When we start to dream about that and then turn that thinking into a theory, that’s when we begin to think. Over the course of the year we will discuss some of the universal laws and how to apply them to our lives, creating the life that we’d love to live. As my mentor Mary Morrissey says, “If you keep breathing for the next 365 days you will have created a life. You don’t get a choice about creating a life. It will be either by design or default. You do get a choice about the life you will create.” The truth is that we can have anything we want that we are willing to become.

I have not experienced a single episode of fainting since I changed my thinking. What do you want? What have you been thinking about?